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President
George W. Bush earned widespread praise from network reporters and
analysts for the delivery of his speech Tuesday night to a joint session
of Congress. Some examples:

-- ABC’s George Stephanopoulos: "He was
definitely in command of his brief tonight and I think...he seemed to be
enjoying himself."

-- ABC’s Sam Donaldson: "You just saw a new
fresh spirit in the chamber. I thought the President was a little nervous
at first, Peter, but he certainly settled in quite confidently and I think
overall people will judge this a very effective speech."

-- CBS’s Bob Schieffer: "An effective
speech."

-- CBS’s Dan Rather: "If one could venture a
guess, it would be that this speech will be remarked upon generally as a
good speech, well delivered. President Bush started out perhaps a bit
nervously, then seemed to hit a confident stride and built toward his
close."

-- CNN’s Jeff Greenfield: "You know, when you
look at the polls everyone will be taking overnight, the people will say
he did fine. And the reason I can confidently predict that is they always
say the President does fine in these situations."

-- NBC’s Tom Brokaw:
"It was, as advertised, more prose than poetry."

-- NBC’s Tim Russert: "I was amazed by how
conversational he was tonight, and confident and comfortable as I
mentioned. And I think in large part it’s because he is feeling very
much at ease with the job."

George Stephanopoulos: "Well Peter, he was
definitely in command of his brief tonight and I think you’re right, he
seemed to be enjoying himself, particularly with those touches of
self-deprecating humor -- knowing that it might have been a close vote for
the Congress to invite him and how he lost the city of Philadelphia big.
What I found most interesting was how he opened the speech. The first
policy he mentioned was Social Security and Medicare. The last policy he
mentioned was Social Security and Medicare. He knows that’s where the
Democrats are going to attack first. He put the shield of Social Security
and Medicare before the sword of tax cuts."

Sam Donaldson: "Peter, the thing that
stuck me was the tone in the chamber. When President Clinton was there, so
often the Republicans would sit on their hands, the Democrats would
applaud. But tonight you saw the Democrats applauding a lot of his lines.
For instance, when the President said the surplus belongs to the people,
not the government, it was Joe Lieberman who sort of led the standing up
side from the Democratic side. So the tone was one of not only civility,
but while the substance will clearly be debated in the days ahead, you
just saw a new fresh spirit in the chamber. I thought the President was a
little nervous at first, Peter, but he certainly settled in quite
confidently and I think overall people will judge this a very effective
speech."
Peter
Jennings: "I quite agree with you, Sam."

Jennings wrapped up ABC coverage: "Even a
couple of the President’s harshest critics got into my ear this evening
to say they thought he had done better than expected or better than they
had expected, which says something about a measure of his accomplishments
this evening, and perhaps some people in the country who’ve had it in
for the new President may have underestimated his abilities once
again."

Including reporters?

-- CBS News:

Dan Rather grudgingly conceded: "George Bush,
this is not an original thought, he constantly surprises people by
exceeding expectations. Yes, some of his detractors and even some of his
friends say he benefits from low expectations, but he constantly exceeds
expectations. Second point, you can see the growth in George W. Bush
whether you like him or not, whether you agree with him or not on his
politics, his ability to deliver this kind of speech has improved
dramatically over the last six to seven months."

Rather a bit later: "If one could venture a
guess, it would be that this speech will be remarked upon generally as a
good speech, well delivered. President Bush started out perhaps a bit
nervously, then seemed to hit a confident stride and built toward his
close. One of the things that President Bush and those around him have to
be pleased about -- again, whether you like or don’t like George Bush,
whether you agree with him or not -- he has already managed to steer the
national debate to the topics that he spotlighted in his presidential
campaign, tax cut being one."

-- NBC News:

Tim Russert: "I was amazed by how
conversational he was tonight, and confident and comfortable as I
mentioned. And I think in large part it’s because he is feeling very
much at ease with the job. And that’s rather quite striking when you
observe this. Compare this to the way he was when he addressed the nation
during those 37 days. It was described as a hostage tape some of those
times. Not tonight."

ABC’s
Terry Moran insisted "the core of this speech was hard core
conservatism: fiscal restraint; deep, across-the-board spending and tax
cuts," but FNC’s Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke and Tony
Snow as well as CNN’s Jeff Greenfield and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and
Brian Williams all pointed out how Bush advocated an activist government
which would spend more as he appropriated "Democratic applause
lines."

Before the speech, MRC analyst Jessica
Anderson noticed, Peter Jennings asked: "Terry Moran, to what extent
do we see the President’s conservative ideology on display
tonight?"
Moran
contended: "To a considerable extent, Peter. It will be couched in
civil and mostly non-confrontational tones, warm and fuzzy. He’ll even
echo Bill Clinton at one point saying the debate is not about more or less
government, but active government, but this is a conservative
speech."

Following the address, Moran stuck to his spin:
"Although he talked a lot about Democratic priorities -- education,
the entitlements, racial profiling -- the core of this speech was hard
core conservatism: fiscal restraint; deep, across-the-board spending and
tax cuts; the privatization of part of Social Security. So he certainly
has made his own people very happy on this speech."

That’s quite a liberal definition of conservative
when "hard core conservatism" is applied to a man pushing to
increase federal spending faster than inflation as he creates new
entitlement programs.

Observers at other networks detected at least as
much liberalism as conservatism:

-- CNN’s Jeff Greenfield: "Some of what he
said when he talked about putting aside the old debate between those who
want more government regardless of cost and those who want less regardless
of need, that’s almost an echo of Bill Clinton’s, that third way
idea."

-- FNC anchor Brit Hume, as taken down by MRC
analyst Brad Wilmouth: "A speech which seemed structured to portray
this President as a man quite prepared to spend public monies on a
multitude of different projects and he listed many of them before he got
around to talking about what is the centerpiece of his program, his tax
cut. Obviously, the idea was to emphasize how much money is available and
how much money is there to be made available to the public in a tax
cut."

-- FNC analyst Fred Barnes: "I think you had
the structure of the speech correct, Brit. The first half was compassion,
the second half was conservative. Triple the spending on reading, triple
the amount of money spent on character education, double Medicare spending
over ten years, double the number of people over five years who go to
community health centers and military pay raise, double the funding of the
National Institutes of Health. Then he got around to the tax cut and said
what I thought was the only memorable line of the speech: ‘The people of
America have been overcharged, and on their behalf, I am here to ask for a
refund.’"

-- FNC analyst Morton Kondracke: "This
was not a Reagan Republican speech. I mean he did not say that the problem
we face is entirely too much government, let’s get rid of it, let’s
get government off our back. He said that he wanted government to have an
active but limited role and be gauged but not overbearing."

-- FNC’s Tony Snow: "He stole a lot of
Democratic themes early and often. He talked about racial suspicion on the
second page of the speech, he used a Ted Kennedy line about we can’t
make people choose between buying food and buying prescription drugs.
There was a wonderful emotional moment about Joe Moakley, a Democrat from
Massachusetts who’s struggling with cancer. He talked about
disabilities, he talked about conservation."

-- MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: "I thought the
power of this speech came from the first half when he gave a series of
uninterrupted Democratic applause lines. He came out for -- let me count
them -- prescription drugs for seniors, better education, stronger Social
Security, health care, a patients’ bill of rights."

Matthews added: "He said, ‘How about
tax cuts for the lowest income people?’ and I noticed that Kweisi Mfume
was applauding that, the leader of the NAACP. ‘Let’s cut their rates
from 15 points down to 10 points.’ Then he talked about the marriage
penalty, then doubling the child credit, and then repealing the death tax,
and then talking about how important a $1600 a year tax cut can be to a
regular family, daring the elite liberals to say that’s not enough money
for regular people to benefit from. I thought the first part of this
speech and the music came from the Democratic, positive, activist
government. The last part of this speech was a case for conservatism, lots
of red meat to the conservatives, just as powerful in cutting apart the
constituencies. The Democrats will now have to defend."

-- MSNBC anchor Brian Williams highlighted Bush’s
"Democratic red meat," suggesting to Virginia Governor Jim
Gilmore: "Now Governor, you know the Beltway view during the eight
Clinton years were that what we saw there was Bill Clinton appropriating,
largely, the Republican position, and that’s what he did to the
revolution that was the 104th Congress. Tonight saw a Republican President
with a lot of Democratic red meat applause lines loaded into that
speech."

Ted
Koppel opened Tuesday’s Nightline by stressing how despite an economic
downturn President Bush is still pushing "huge tax cuts" as well
as spending hikes:
"Well, the markets are down and energy prices are up. Companies are
laying off workers and the American consumer is less optimistic about the
economy and his own future than he has been in a long time, and yet
tonight President Bush, as he had promised, proposed huge tax cuts,
pledged to pay down the national debt and put forward substantial
increases in major segments of the budget."

OMB Director Mitch Daniels pointed out to
Koppel that Bush’s tax cut is smaller than the ones enacted during the
Kennedy and Reagan years.

Tax cuts
are the "easy part" while holding spending to a four percent
increase is "the tough part," NBC’s Tim Russert and Tom Brokaw
argued in seeming to question the wiseness of Bush’s cut taxes first
approach.

During NBC’s post Bush speech coverage, Russert
asserted: "George Bush is putting his tax cut first because that’s
the easy part. Even Richard Gephardt, the Democrat, today used the ‘T’
word. He said we could maybe take a trillion dollars. What happens then?
After you get your tax cut then you’ve got to hold the line at four
percent in spending."
Brokaw:
"That’s the tough part."
Russert:
"That’s the tough part because last year a Republican Congress and
a Democratic President said how about eight percent."

Just because politicians couldn’t control
themselves does not mean spending four percent more should be
"tough." Most people would dream of getting an automatic four
percent hike in their household budget. And to whatever extent it is
"tough," the media are at least partly to blame because they
rush to highlight supposed victims of any slowing in the rate of spending
hikes.

Dan
Rather expressed wonderment at how President Bush managed to become the
first President in history who "has quoted Yogi Berra and the Three
Bears in the same speech."

Shortly after Bush completed his address to
Congress, Dan Rather ruminated: "At least one record was set in the
speech. In this address President Bush quoted Yogi Berra as saying ‘when
you come to a fork in the road, take it.’ The fork, said the President,
is a choice between a big tax cut or big spending. The President also said
some believe his tax cut is too big, others too small, he thinks it’s
just right, he said. So, this may be the first time in history a
President, any President, has quoted Yogi Berra and the Three Bears in the
same speech."

Balance
to Dan Rather: Using the Democratic-liberal spin to caricature Bush’s
budget plan and the Democratic-liberal spin to describe the Democratic
plan.

Check out how, on Tuesday’s CBS Evening
News, he characterized the competing plans:
"President
Bush tonight outlines his cut-federal-programs-to-get-a-tax-cut-plan to
Congress and the nation. Democrats will then deliver their televised
response which basically says Mr. Bush’s ideas are risky business,
endangering among other things, Social Security and Medicare."

Yeah, that’s about it.

A few minutes earlier Rather opened the broadcast by
labeling Bush’s tax cut as "big" and
"controversial." Rather asserted at the top of the February 27
CBS Evening News: "He will try to sell the Congress, and you the
public, his federal budget plan, including the controversial big tax cut
he says is necessary to stimulate the economy."

Numerous
White House visits by Denise Rich and Democratic fundraiser Beth Dozoretz:
Relevant or irrelevant? ABC and NBC offered contrasting assessments on
Tuesday night. ABC mentioned only Rich as reporter Jackie Judd contended
her 19 visits "undercut...Republican suspicions" since they
"did not accelerate when the pardon campaign was underway." In
contrast, NBC’s Lisa Myers ignored Rich and marveled at how Dozoretz
"made a remarkable number of visits to the White House: 43 times in
the last two years alone."

-- Jackie Judd, on ABC’s World News Tonight,
reported how Dan Burton thinks Marc Rich may have used straw donors to
funnel money to Clinton’s library. She then tried to undermine another
concern:
"Other records
already reviewed may undercut other Republican suspicions, that Denise
Rich was at the White House so often it helped smooth the way for
ex-husband to win a pardon. But sources say Secret Service logs show that
Rich visited fewer than 19 times in eight years and that those visits did
not accelerate when the pardon campaign was underway."

-- Lisa Myers, on the NBC Nightly News, in contrast
warned:
"Congressional
sources say Secret Service records show a key figure who lobbied for the
Rich pardon, Democratic fundraiser Beth Dozoretz, a close personal friend
of Bill Clinton, made a remarkable number of visits to the White House: 43
times in the last two years alone. She is taking the 5th."

10. No matter how busy you get, eat your nine square meals a day
9. Kick Roger Clinton’s ass during "Disgraced Brothers Week"
on "Jeopardy"
8. Get a good hole-punch -- you never know when you’ll have to change
your belt size
7. Try and model your relationships after Bill and Hillary...or Bill and
Monica...or Bill and Paula
6. When anyone bumps into you and says, "Pardon me," say,
"Sure, that’ll be $400,000"
5. Try to watch a lot of that wrestlin’ football
4. If you hang with powerful in-laws, you may get in on some of that
"hot intern action"
3. Cutting your own hair is a great way to save money
2. Remember, things could be worse, Hillary could be your wife
1. Take it in stride when your brother-in-law offers to pardon your
"gigantic ass"